WebView and Cookies on Android

Question

I have an application on appspot that works fine through regular browser, however when used through Android WebView, it cannot set and read cookies. I am not trying to get cookies "outside" this web application BTW, once the URL is visited by WebView, all processing, ids, etc. can stay there, all I need is session management inside that application. First screen also loads fine, so I know WebView + server interactivity is not broken.

I looked at WebSettings class, there was no call like setEnableCookies.

I load url like this:

public class MyActivity extends Activity {
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);       
    WebView webview = new WebView(this);
    setContentView(webview);      
    webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);
  }
  .. 
}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The CookieSyncManager is used to synchronize the browser cookie store between RAM and permanent storage. To get the best performance, browser cookies are saved in RAM. A separate thread saves the cookies between, driven by a timer.

To use the CookieSyncManager, the host application has to call the following when the application starts:

CookieSyncManager.createInstance(context)

To set up for sync, the host application has to call

CookieSyncManager.getInstance().startSync()

in Activity.onResume(), and call

 CookieSyncManager.getInstance().stopSync()

in Activity.onPause().

To get instant sync instead of waiting for the timer to trigger, the host can call

CookieSyncManager.getInstance().sync()

The sync interval is 5 minutes, so you will want to force syncs manually anyway, for instance in onPageFinished(WebView, String). Note that even sync() happens asynchronously, so don't do it just as your activity is shutting down.

Finally something like this should work:

// use cookies to remember a logged in status   
CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this);
CookieSyncManager.getInstance().startSync();
WebView webview = new WebView(this);
webview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
setContentView(webview);      
webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);

Answer 2

I figured out what's going on.

When I load a page through a server side action (a url visit), and view the html returned from that action inside a Webview, that first action/page runs inside that Webview. However, when you click on any link that are action commands in your web app, these actions start a new browser. That is why cookie info gets lost because the first cookie information you set for Webview is gone, we have a seperate program here.

You have to intercept clicks on Webview so that browsing never leaves the app, everything stays inside the same Webview.

  WebView webview = new WebView(this);      
  webview.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {  
      @Override  
      public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url)  
      {  
        view.loadUrl(url);  
        return true;  
      }  
    });                 
  setContentView(webview);      
  webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);

This fixes the problem.